Kennicott was writing, taking his time, choosing his words with care.
“You ever met Fox?”
“Never. We don’t exactly travel in the same social circles.”
“Did you see him at the work site today?”
“No.”
“Except for you and Bassante, who else was on site when you found the body?”
“I don’t think anyone else was here. The shift ended at three-thirty, and the guys cleared out real fast.”
Kennicott snapped his notebook shut. Unclicked his pen.
“I need to check what’s going on with these protesters,” Lindsmore said. “We’ve got to keep this under control.”
Greene and Kennicott didn’t say anything until he was gone.
“I’ll get a car to take you to headquarters and you can give a full video statement,” Kennicott said.
“Don’t bother. It’s not far. I’ll walk over.”
“You remember Kamil Darvesh? He’s in Homicide now.”
“Glad to hear that.”
“I’ll call and make sure he’s the one to interview you. Then I’m going to need him for the rest of the day.”
Greene stood aside to let Kennicott by. Two steps past Greene, he turned around.
“When did you come back?”
“Six months ago.”
“Six months.”
“I was going to call you soon, Daniel. Once I’d settled a few things.” It was true, but Greene knew it sounded lame.
“How’s your father?” Kennicott asked.
“Fine. Thanks for asking.”
“He must be glad to have you home.”
“Very.” And even happier to have a granddaughter, Greene thought.
Kennicott hesitated. “Can I ask you what the hell are you doing working in construction?”
Greene put his hard hat back on. “I like it.”
Kennicott stared at him.
Greene knew what he was thinking. “No, Daniel,” he said. “I’m not undercover.”
“What’s your job then?”
“General labour. I haul stuff around all day.”
“What in the world do you like about it?”
“I like that I don’t have to think.”
Greene wasn’t going to tell Kennicott about Alison. Not yet. But Kennicott knew him well. Greene could sense he knew there was more to the story.
“Ari, you seem to stumble over a lot of dead bodies.”
“Not of my choosing, believe me. This is the last thing I need right now.”
Kennicott didn’t move, didn’t blink.
“Daniel, I’m sorry I misled you. I was in shock when I found her. I was desperate to find the killer.”
They both knew he was talking about Jennifer.
“I’m sorry I charged you with her murder. I hope I never arrest another innocent person ever again,” Kennicott said.
Greene thought about reaching out to shake his hand, but the wounds they’d inflicted on each other were too deep, too raw.
“Right now,” Kennicott said, turning away, “I need to figure out who killed young Livingston Fox.”
Greene watched him walk away. He knew Daniel wouldn’t look back, and he didn’t.
8
The sun was beating down, and Alison could feel herself break out into a sweat. She was trying to process the shocking news she’d just heard: Livingston Fox was dead. Murdered. How could that be? The story was unconfirmed, but in her gut she knew it was true. That’s why Fox had missed their meeting at the restaurant. Things in her life just kept getting worse.
She knew Fox had many enemies. But who would want to kill him? What was the big story he’d wanted to tell her and why had it been such a secret? And where was Amberlight?
From behind her she heard a new chant arise from the crowd. “Cassandra, Cassandra, Cassandra!”
She turned and saw Amberlight striding up the middle of Augusta Avenue, her tall, gawky frame bobbing with enthusiasm. The protesters parted to clear a path. She had her megaphone raised in the air, and as she got to the middle of the crowd she used it to shout, “Stop the Fox! Save the market! Stop the Fox! Save our city!”
People started clapping and shouting and taking up the chant. Amberlight made it to the front, stopped at the police barricade at the top of Augusta, turned, and spread her arms out, like an old-fashioned preacher about to give a sermon. This quieted the raucous crowd.
“Friends,” she shouted. “Your presence here today sends a message to the politicians, the media, the bankers, and most of all, to the out-of-control builders who are turning Toronto into Condo City!”
There were loud cheers.
She raised her arms higher. “Our message is clear. We need quality housing, accessible health care facilities, parks and playgrounds, modern sporting venues, and environmentally sustainable buildings that serve all the people, not just the wealthy.”
She pointed down College Street to where Fox planned to build his second condo. “We are not going to let Livingston Fox K2 Kensington!”
This brought the biggest cheer yet.
Amberlight raised her megaphone and began another chant. “Keep the Fox out of our backyard! Keep the Fox out!”
The crowd was squeezing Alison on all sides, tighter and tighter, as newly arrived cops pushed people back. Clearly the news that Fox was dead hadn’t leaked out yet. When it did, the protest could get out of hand and she could end up on TV, disguise or no disguise. She could even get arrested. Either way, Ari would find out what she was up to.
She had to escape. The protester beside her had a big dog with him that was in the way. It wasn’t on a leash.
“Excuse me,” she said. “Can I get by?”
“Sure,” he said. “Fahrenheit, come here, come here.”
The dog sidled up to him and she scooted through the gap. Think, Alison, she told herself, think, as she ducked her way among arms and legs and bodies. She had many unanswered questions: What time had Fox been murdered? Who knew about this? Had his family been informed? His fiancée? She would be devastated. Did Maxine or his chauffeur know about this awful news? What about the police? They would soon learn about her scheduled meeting with Fox, wouldn’t they? Or maybe not. It had been a secret.
She inched her way through the crowd. The mood of the protesters was becoming less joyous, the chanting and singing giving way to an angry rumble. Everyone was jamming forward. She spotted a TV truck where a cameraman had climbed up the antennas tower to get a topside view. She managed to squeeze through and shelter herself behind the truck. She peered around the corner and up the sidewalk.
Cops carrying Plexiglas shields were walking side by side toward her, herding people who had strayed onto the sidewalk back onto the street. It was clear they didn’t want anyone going near the construction site or the alley behind it.
Should she talk to the police? Would they even care? And what about her father? Did he know about the murder? He was an ex–homicide detective. He might have been on site when it happened. Thank goodness, he was safe.
Across the sidewalk there was a path beside the last house before the alleyway. It had to lead to its backyard. This could be a perfect escape route. And maybe, if there was someone home, she could knock on the back door and convince them to let her in. If she could go upstairs, she’d be able to get some amazing photos of the protest march from the bedroom window that overlooked Augusta Avenue.
She had a few seconds. The trick was to not draw any attention to herself. If she ran, the police, and maybe one of the TV cameramen, would notice her.
Emerging from behind the truck, she rolled the backpack off her shoulder and pulled out her keys. She strolled casually toward the house as though she’d done this a thousand times. Passing the front porch, where neglected promotional flyers were piled in front of the door, she veered onto the path, thinking that she was out of luck and no one would be home. It had been that kind of day.
The flagstones beside the house were
cracked and overgrown with weeds. She opened a creaky gate and walked into a tiny backyard. A garage occupied half of it and a large maple tree took up most of the rest. There was a concrete patio against the back wall of the house covered by a grapevine. She sat on a bench beside the door and made herself breathe. The noise from the street had almost disappeared.
The roof of the garage was sagging and the paint was peeling off. The bench she was on was uneven and tippy. No signs of recent life here. Beside her was a heavy-looking metal table in front of the kitchen window. If she wanted to look in, she’d have to move it out of the way.
She put her keys in her pocket, approached the back door, and knocked. “Anyone home?”
There was no response. She knocked again as loud as she could. Still no answer.
More out of habit than anything else, she turned the door handle, expecting it to be locked. It wasn’t. She pushed the door open, took a tentative step inside, and found herself in the kitchen. The place looked as if no one had used it in years. The air was moist and hot.
“Hello?” she said, shutting the door behind her. “Is anyone home?”
She put her backpack on the kitchen counter and in a few steps she was in the dining room, then the living room. Both were filled with old, dusty furniture.
“Hello,” she said again, louder. The bay window at the front of the house was curtained in see-through sheers. Outside, the cops had completely encircled the protesters. Some of them were now sitting in the street and a few were raising extra-long selfie sticks high in the air to take photos. She had to get upstairs. In a few steps she was standing in the empty second-floor hallway. There were four doors, three of them open.
“Anyone here?” Her voice was tentative. She could hear the drummer outside and the protesters were getting louder. She checked the rooms with open doors—two bedrooms and a bathroom. They were empty. She went up to the window of the room facing the street, kneeled down, and pulled out her phone. A scuffle broke out between some protesters and a female cop and she snapped away. This was great stuff. A bunch of cops rushed in and dragged away two protesters, then things seemed to calm down.
She still hadn’t checked the room with the closed door. It was on the north side of the house, and its window would overlook the alleyway. She knocked, hard. “Hello! Anyone here?”
She could hear police sirens approaching. The cops were bringing in reinforcements. She opened the door.
The room was dark and seemed to be empty, but as her eyes adjusted, she noticed a metal chair next to a curtained window. She walked across the wood floor, her footsteps echoing in the vacant space. Then, like a spy in a movie, she carefully pulled the curtain far enough aside to peek out. From up here, she had a clear view over the hoarding surrounding the construction site. She could see through the top of a large window into a work shed.
The chair. She climbed onto it and now she could see right in. Her eyes were drawn to a tall man with a hairnet on, wearing plastic gloves and slippers. He had to be a cop. Alison jerked back when she saw what he was looking at. It was the body of Livingston Fox lying face up on the floor, a long metal bar sticking right out of his chest.
Bile rose in her stomach. This was horrible. Horrible, horrible, horrible. She thought she was going to vomit.
It was also, she realized, an unbelievable opportunity. She raised her phone above her head and hit the shutter button, brought the phone to eye level and took a second shot, then bent down to take a third.
Before she could flip the phone around to see the photos, a handsome man in a suit and an overweight cop walked out the back gate beside the shed. The handsome man was looking down the alleyway. If he looked up now, he’d see her.
She clutched the edge of the curtain. What should she do? As quickly as she dared, she let it roll back into place, praying that he hadn’t noticed the movement. She turned the phone around and opened the photo gallery. She’d got good shots of the cops grabbing the protesters. But the TV crews and the protesters would all have similar pictures.
She scrolled to the last three photos. The first showed the top of the window and the roof of the shed. The second was too low. It had caught the bottom of the shed, the hoarding, and a bit of the alleyway below.
The last one was perfect. There it was, framed by the shed window: Livingston Fox’s dead body on the floor. No other media outlet would have that shot. It was gruesome. But, she knew, it was journalistic gold.
9
When Kennicott was a kid, he and his older brother, Michael, used to sneak into construction sites. Back then, apartment buildings and office towers were going up in the suburbs, not downtown. On summer nights the two boys would ride their bikes to one of the towers being built not far from their neighbourhood. No one worried much about security in those days, and it was usually easy to find a gap in the fence or loose hoarding that surrounded the place, squeeze inside, and explore.
The workers often left their tools behind, and sometimes there were electric platform carts that the boys goofed around on for hours. Once, when they were playing tag on the sixth floor of a building, Daniel almost ran right into a gaping hole. Michael spotted it and grabbed him seconds before he could fall to what would have been an ugly death.
As he walked through the Kensington Gate site, it all came back to Kennicott. The clean rawness of freshly poured concrete, the spaciousness of rooms formed but empty, the excitement of something new being created. The air was filled with a sweet, sandy smell. Lindsmore joined him and started reading from his notebook, which, even unfolded, looked tiny in his big hand.
“The 911 call was received at exactly 4:01:23 this afternoon.”
“What did Greene say?” Kennicott asked.
“He didn’t identify himself. He just said he was a construction worker and that he’d come upon a dead body in the shed.”
That sounds like Greene, Kennicott thought. Always keeping something secret. “What else did he say?”
“Very little. He identified the body as Livingston Fox, then he hung up. Call took sixteen seconds.”
They got to the back of the building and the sunlight hit Kennicott in the eye. A few steps ahead, two Johnny on the Spot toilets let off a foul smell. Past them was the shed, its door closed. A young female officer stood in front of it, trying to look stoic but Kennicott could see she was distressed.
“Detective Kennicott,” he said, reaching out his hand.
“PC Rozier.” Her palm was sweaty.
“Where are the paramedics?”
She turned and Kennicott followed her line of sight. A man and a woman in uniform were sitting in the shade on a pile of two-by-fours.
“The smell from the portable toilets is pretty bad,” Kennicott said.
“Yes it is, sir.”
She stood aside to let them enter. Instead of going in, Kennicott pointed beyond the shed. “What’s back there?”
“I don’t know.”
“The back gate,” Lindsmore said. “It was open when we got here.”
Kennicott hesitated. “Let’s see that first,” he said. “The body’s not going anywhere.”
He counted twelve steps to the gate. An unlatched combination lock hung from its handle. They passed through the gate and stepped into the alleyway. Kennicott kept his eyes on the ground for signs of blood on the concrete. There was nothing but dirt and a puddle of dog pee that Lindsmore almost stepped in. He’d have the forensic officers search it later, but he doubted they’d find anything.
He surveyed the scene. There was an old house across the alley with one curtained window up on the second floor. To his right he could see the protesters out on Augusta Avenue. To his left the alley turned the corner and ran south.
He played back in his mind the conversation he’d had minutes ago with Greene. He knew Ari. After he’d called 911, he probably couldn’t resist coming out here and taking a quick look around. What had he seen?
Kennicott motioned to Lindsmore to follow him. They walked along t
he alley and peered around the corner. The killer could have come this way, unseen by the crowd on Augusta, had a private rendezvous with Fox in the shed, then walked back down the alley to escape.
Kennicott retraced his steps to the gate. Augusta Avenue was filling up fast with boisterous protesters. It was only a matter of time, and probably not much time, before word got out that Livingston Fox was dead, murdered. There was no way of knowing how the crowd would react when the news broke.
Lindsmore had strung police tape across the end of the alley where it joined Augusta and had posted two officers there to keep people out. But this was thin protection for a crime scene.
He reached for his radio. “It’s Kennicott. Get me every available car here fast. I need more crowd control. I need to protect this crime scene. I need to keep the press away. And I need officers to check the alleyway, talk to the media people here and get their video files, interview any protesters who will cooperate with us, and go door to door along the houses in Augusta and the stores in the area.” He clicked the radio off and turned to Lindsmore. “Who’s the forensic officer?”
“Detective Ho. He should be here by now.”
“Good,” he said, taking one last look and not seeing anything else. “Let’s go see the body.”
10
Greene had refused a lift to police headquarters because he didn’t want to be photographed getting into a squad car. On foot, he could slip away, unseen by the press. Besides, it wasn’t far and he wanted to walk. He headed up to College Street, crossed Spadina Avenue, and in seconds he’d left behind the chaos of the demonstration and the crime scene and entered a different world. This stretch of College Street was the southern edge of the University of Toronto, and the outdoor cafes and sidewalks were filled with backpack-wearing students engaged in fervent conversations. A long time ago, Greene had thought about becoming a history professor. How different his life would have been.
He had to get a hold of his daughter. He was still getting used to using the phrase “his daughter.” He assumed that news of a murder at Kensington Gate would have already gotten out—even if the police managed to hold back Fox’s name for a few hours—and he didn’t want Alison to be worried about him.
Heart of the City Page 4
